HIGH QUALITY ALL-LINEAR POWER SUPPLY FOR ATX-SOCKET COMPUTERS – LESS THAN 1mV RIPPLE ON 12V, 5V, AND 3.3V RAILS

Cheap switch-mode power supplies used universally in IT applications are extremely detrimental to an audio system. Although the motherboard of an audio PC is intrinsically noisy in electrical terms, most of the damage is done upstream of the ATX socket by the process of converting 240V AC to 12V / 5V and 3.3V DC rails.

Ideally, each DC rail would be independently generated from a linear supply and delivered by optimised cabling to the motherboard. With varying degrees of implementation excellence, this is how the best-sounding audio computers and streaming devices are designed. If you're serious about building your own music 'server' or audio computer, nothing less is good enough.

This all-linear power supply is capable of powering Mini ITX or ITX motherboards running Atom or i3 processors, using standard 20- or 24-pin ATX sockets, with or without P4 breakouts, as well as a solid state drive, USB devices and single PCI card or SPDIF converter.

We strongly recommend that your hard drive and optical drive do not share the same power supply as the motherboard and solid state playback drive. These 'dirty' drives should always be powered with separate supplies and turned off during playback from the SSD,

The PSU comes with full instructions for making your own high quality ATX loom to connect the linear supply to your mobo, drives, USB outpupt and soundcard. Alternatively, for an extra £75, we can make a loom for you using a specific, proven 'recipe' deploying audio-grade parts.

It is also recommended that you power the audio-carrying USB output with a clean, dedicated 5V rail from this supply, bypassing the motherboard entirely for this crucial stage. Furthermore, the same PSU will happily generate unique 5V/12V rails to power a soundcard directly.

Yes, this is a mass-produced, off-the-shelf laboratory bench power supply, not a svelte audio trinket. It's no oil painting. That's why it's one third the priceor less of the 'bespoke, audiophile' offerings. Hide it in a cabinet. However, we have auditioned our way through a number of candidates over a long period to arrive at this recommendation: we believe it's the best performing, best value, tool for the job. It's well engineered where it matters, with a large, high quality toroidal and sophisticated regulators. It also runs silent, with passive cooling via heatsinks on the rear – most supplies of this type deploy one or more fans in this role which create undesirable acoustic and electrical noise.

The all-important ATX loom instructions are only available to customers who purchase the PSU from Item. Additionally (inevitably), we also offer Special Edition modifications to improve its performance – again, please call or email for details if required.

The first time we auditioned this supply with a jury-rigged loom, for a few minutes it sounded terrible: so quiet; all the spatial cues had warped about strangely . . . then it dawned on us that a world of fine-grained information had been hiding in the grungy noise floor. Suddenly we could hear recordings and the rooms they were recorded in. Like a big shift in a familiar system often does, it caught us by surprise. Taking your PC's power supply all-linear reaps obviously audible benefits. A high quality ATX loom and connectors takes it another step up, too.